I don't know if there is an excellent writeup out there I can point to; this field is full of a bunch of BS advertisement articles, and a quick google search fo

I don't know if there is an excellent writeup out there I can point to; this field is full of a bunch of BS advertisement articles, and a quick google search found nothing worthwhile on either side of the debate. My opinion in the parent post to yours is based on my decade of experience with bitcoin, and having been there every step of the way in its evolution and the birth and erratic journey of Ethereum. In short summary, Bitcoin seeks to provide a secure, stable, no-BS minimal base layer upon which financial contracts of all sorts can be written. The Lightning Network is an example of a smart contract on Bitcoin, one that has been quite stable and secure compared with frothy DAO, ICO, DeFi, or whatever the latest marketing term for smart contracts is in the Ethereum space. Bitcoin adds small, targeted features to the base protocol after a truly intense amount of work goes in to proving their correctness and the way in which they interact with other parts of the base layer. Ethereum chases after whatever the fad of the moment is and crams everything into a gigantic toolbox of everything and the kitchen sink, and makes you use all that complexity for even things as simple as multi-sig and replay protection. To stretch an analogy, Bitcoin is a minimal RISC architecture while Ethereum is x86, with all the history of legacy features and obsolete stuff included. Now your task as a cryptocurrency application engineer is to build a secure protocol that must survive without mercy from attackers. Would you rather do this on x86 or a minimal, proven-correct RISC platform? The choice to me is obvious. Going into the details of why is way more than could possibly fit in a HN comment, however.